State Of The Art

It seems like with every new Holiday Season American consumers are demanding more and more value from retailers. In our technological age shoppers have become ultra savvy when it comes to value and price. No longer are consumers fooled into simply assuming that the most expensive item is the highest quality item. Consumers instinctively understand that value is more important than price and that with just a little extra research they can usually find a high quality item at a better value than the highest price one.

The question then for me is why has the American consumer not been more discerning when shopping for a real estate agent or firm? With a little extra research the consumer would realize that the highest price agents and firms are not necessarily the highest quality and that there are far better values available than the highest priced firms and agents.

Thanks to advancements in technology and overall efficiency, real estate agents can now provide the same if not higher quality services at a fraction of the cost. Why then have the prices for services not changed for the vast majority of providers over the past 30 plus years?

When the precursor to today's modern cellphone was introduced in the 1980's the original model cost $4,000 per phone. Can you imagine if you walked into Best Buy today and saw a cellphone listed for $4,000? Let's see do I buy an Iphone for $300 or the $4,000 phone that takes 10 hours to charge for 30 minutes of talk time? That would be a "no brainer".

If consumers were complacent the quality and value of goods in America would never improve. Thanks to American consumer demands the quality of almost every product has improved over time and the value of those products has increased immensely. If consumers start demanding better value and quality out of real estate agents and firms things will change. However, until consumers start flexing their purchasing power, the value provided by most firms will remain poor.

We encourage you to demand better value out of today's real estate industry. Thank you.